ENGLAND. AND Aliv'EEICA 



SPi'^.ECH 



HENRY WARD^^EECHER 



FREE-TRADE HALL, ilANCHESTER, 



OCTOBER 9,«18e3. 



BEFBINTED F£OS THE MiSCQESTER " EXJOlISsa AWD TIHB8. 



Boston : 

JAMES REDPATH, Publisher, 

221 Washington Street. 

1863. 



ENGLAND AND AMERICA : 

7-7 

SPEECH 



HENRY WARD BEECHER 



PREE-TRADE HALL, MANCHESTER, 



OCTOBER S, 1863. 



HErniXTED FROM THE MAKCIIESTER "E.TAllIXER ,lXIt TIMES. 




Bos 1 071 r< 

JAMES RED PATH, Publisher, 
2 21 W A s H I N G T o X Street. 

1863. 






Prkss of Geo. C. Raxd & Avery, 3 Cornuill. 



s 

^^^ 



S P E E C II 



A MEETING was held last night in the Free-trade Hall, ac- 
cording to announcement, " to v;clcorae the Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher, on his public appenianee in this country." The hall 
was extremely crowded, and there were probably six thousand 
persons present. It was supposed, from the paper-war of 
placards for the last fortnight, that the meeting might be dis- 
turbed by partisans of the Confederate States. AiTange- 
ments had, therefore, been made for the prompt suppression 
of disorder ; and notices to that effect were posted about the 
room. The chair was taken, at half-past six, by Mr. Francis 
Taylor, At the same time, the entrance of Mr. Beecher, 
accompanied by Mr. Bazley, M. P., and some prominent 
members of the Union and Emancipation Society, was the 
signal for enthusiastic and repeated cheering. The following 
were among the gentlemen present : Mr. Thomas Bazley, M. 
P. ; Bev. Dr. Parker, Manchester ; Bev. J. B. Paton, 
Sheffield; Mr, W. P. Boberts, Manchester; Mr, Councillor 
"Williams, Salford ; Bev. Bichard Jones, Manchester ; Bev. 
J. Bertram, Manchester ; 3Ir. Samuel Bennett, Manchester ; 
]Mr. W. Heywood, Manchester ; jMr. James Galloway, ]^Ian- 
cliester; Mr. Frederick Cooper, Manchester; Mr. Councillor 
Clegg, Manchester ; Mr. Joseph Spence, I^Ianchester ; Bev. 
P. Prout, Haslingden ; Mr. A. Ireland, Mr. Joseph Leese, 
Mr. Charles Bury, Mr. H. Dunckley : Bev. G. M'Gregor, 
Farnworth ; Mr. B. Cooper, Manchester; Mr, J. B. Cooper, 



Manchester ; Rev. J. Duneklej, Heywood ; Rev. W. Duck- 
ins, Micldlewich ; Rev. W. Hanson, Manchester; Rev. J. 
Turner, Farn worth ; Rev. J. M'Pherson, Manchester ; Rev. 
R. Cliff, Bury ; Rev. W. Sykes ; Rev. W. H. Davidson ; 
Rev. R. Best, Bolton ; Rev. J. S. Hill, Pendleton ; Rev. J. 
P. Taylor, Darlington ; Rev. G. Robinson, Over Darwen ; 
Rev. G-. Pywell, Stockport ; Mr. D. Mills, Bowdon ; Mr. 
S. P. Robinson, Manchester ; Rev. Gr. Waldon, Manchester ; 
Rev. J. Morgan, Rev. W. Shuttleworth, Manchester ; Rev. 
J. Taylor, Manchester ; Rev. 0. B. Beadwell, America ; 
Rev. T. G. Lee, Salford ; Mr. Robert Smith, Manchester ; 
Mr. W. Boyd, Glossop; Mr. T. Roberts, Manchester; 
Mr. J. B. Whitehead, Rawtenstall ; Mr. J. C. Edwards, 
Manchester ; Mr. T. R. Whitehead, Rawtenstall ; Mr. E. 0. 
Greening, Manchester; Mr. S. Watts, Jun., Manchester; Mr. 
J. C. Dyer, Bumage ; Mr. Councillor T. Warburton, Man- 
chester ; Mr. T. H. Barker, Manchester ; Mr. J. H. Est- 
court, Manchester ; and Mr. P. Smclair, Manchester. Padre 
Gavazzi was in one of the reserved seats below the platform. 
The first row was occupied Ijy forty of the students of the 
Lancashire Lidependent College. 

One of the honorable secretaries (Mr. Greening) stated 
that the following letter had been addressed to his colleague, 
Mr. Edwards, and himself, by their president, from Scot- 
land : — 

PxTXACREE, DtTNKELD, October 8, 18G3. 

Gentlemen : — I regret that I shall not be able to be with 
you on Friday, to join in your welcome to the Rev. Henry 
Ward Beecher, as I am suffering from the effects of severe 
influenza. I have firm faith that, purified from the plague- 
spot of slavery, the Republic will emerge in its integrity from 
this war with renewed life and vigor. I desire, however, 
most earnestly to impress upon the working-men of Manches- 



ter, that the struggle iiov»' going on iu Amcriea is tlich- ov^n 
battle ; for on the maintenance of the great Republic in the 
West, depends in a great degree the progress of popular in- 
stitutions all over the world. This, the enemies of freedom 
well know ; and therefore imperial influences abroad, as well 
as selfish and oligarciiical sympathies at home, are brought to 
bear in fovor of the slave-holding conspirators. Mr. Beecher 
will be able to tell his fellow-countrymen that, whoever else 
be against them, the hearts of the working-men of England, 
and I believe througliout Europe, beat in unison with those 
who are fighting the battle of freedom on the other side of 
the Atlantic. Yours, &c., 

(Signed) Thomas Bayley Potter. 

The Honorable Secretaires of the Union and Emancipation 
Society. 

(Prolonged applause.) Letters also had been received 
from Mr. W. E. Forster, M. P. for Bradford, (cheers,) and 
Mr. Bright, M. P., (prolonged cheering,) regretting their in- 
ability to be present. Mr. Bright said, '* I am grieved to be 
away from home when Mr. Beecher is in the neighborhood." 
(Loud cheers.) 

The chairman said he felt proud of the honor of chau-- 
manship conferred upon him on this occasion ; and, in re- 
liance upon their kind forbearance, he would endeavor to dis- 
charge the duties to the best of his ability. (Applause.) 
He could promise that the preliminary proceedings should not 
be long. They had come together to welcome the Rev. H. 
W. Beecher, on his first public appearance in England, (loud 
cheers) ; and, notwithstanding all the attempts which had 
been made in public and in private to deter persons from be- 
ing present, he was happy to see such a large and crowded 
assembly. (Cheers.) 

Mr Greenino; read the followino; address : — - 



Eeverend and Deak Sir : As mombers of the Uninii and 
Eiiiancipation Society, Vfe avail ourselves of this, your first 
public apwaranee in Engianfi, after a tour nndertalven for the 
purpose of relaxation, to welcome you, not on!}'- as a citizen 
of a great and fiee country, but as one who, for a long series 
of years, has been a prominent and successful pioneer in the 
cause of human progress. Though separated from you by 
the broad Atlantic, we have been earnest spectators of your 
fearless and persisitent advocacy of the personal rights of the 
colored race, amidst many perils and dangers unmoved alike 
by the blandishments of office, or the threats of opponents ; 
and also of your consistent adherence to the principles of 
political and religious liberty. We d(3eply deplore the dread- 
ful calamity which has come upon your native country ; but^ 
believing as we do, that its sole cause is to be found in that 
sum of all vJUanies, human slavery, we recognize in it the 
hand of retribudve justice working out the inevitable punish- 
ment of wrong-doing, and overtaking not only the Southern 
slave-holder, whose hands are imbued with guilt, but our own 
country, from which you inherited this hideous institution, and 
the Free States of America which have tolerated its existence. 
Living ourselves under a constitutional government, and hav- 
ing firm faith in representative institutions, we viewed with 
alarm the outbreak of a rebellion, which its promoters avowed 
to be an attempt to raise an empire on the ' ' corner-stone 
of slavery," and which was essentially a rebellion against 
free constitutional government, and an appeal from the ballot- 
box to the riiie. The success of such a rebellion would place 
constitutional hberty in jeopardy everywhere, and we con- 
gratulate you and your countrymen on the determined stand 
you have made to maintain unimpaired the great Republic 
which has been handed down to you by your forefathers, and 
thus to present to the world a noble spectacle of self-denying 
patriotism. We rejoice that your statesmen, while maintaining 
that the restoration of the Union is a sacred obligation, have 
been led, step by step to the recognition of the rights of the ne- 
gi-o ; thus vindicating the consistency of those who have labored 
in the anti-slavery cause for a cjuaiier of a century, in the midst 
of obloquy and misrepresentation, supported only by their firm 



faith in the eternal principles of i-ight and justice ; and cstal)- 
lishing for them a claim to the heartfelt gratitude of the lov- 
ers of freedom everywhere. In conclusion, we venture to hope 
that your visit may be the means of correcting some of the 
misrepresentations, as to the position of this country in regard 
to the American struggle, which have been assiduously spread 
by certain portions of the press, and of cementing the bonds 
of amity, which ought forever to bind together in peace the 
two great regresentatives of the Anglo-Saxon race — England 
and America. The cordial aUiauce of these two powers may 
not be consistent with the designs of despotism, or be aj)- 
proved by the enemies of liberty here or elsewhere ; but, be- 
ing one in race, language, religion, and love of freedom, they 
may thus lead the van of civilization, and bid defiance to the 
shocks which jealousy or suspicion might bring upon them. 
In the firm hope that such a future may be in store for your 
country and ours, we bid you God speed in the enterprise in 
which you have been so long engaged, and borne such a 
noble part. 

(Signed) Tho^ias Bayley Potter, President. 

On behalf of the Union and Emancipation Society. 

Mr. Bazley, M. P., in a speech of some length, and which 
was much applauded, moved the adoption of the address by 
the meeting. 

Mr. Estcoui't seconded the motion. 

The chairman then put the resolution, and thousands of 
hands were thrust up high above the heads of the dense au- 
dience. After an interval of loud cheers, the chairman put 
the contrary, and, amidst peals of derisive laughter and 
cheers, about fifty hands were held up. 

The chairman : I declare the resolution carried by a ma- 
jority of five hundred to one. (Enthusiastic cheering.) The 
chairman, in handing tlie address to jMr. Beecher, expressed 
a hope that the reverend gentleman would long liavc health 
to continue his famed career. 



The Rev. Mr. Beeclier then turned to tlie audience to 
speak, but for several minutes he was prevented by deafening 
cheers, followed by a few hisses, which only provoked a re- 
newed outburst of applause. 

Mr. Beecher then said : — 

Mr, Chairman, Ladies and Gtentlemen : The address 
which you have kindly presented to me contains matters 
both personal and national. (InteiTuption.) My friends, 
we will have a whole night session but we will be heard ! 
(Loud cheers.) I have not come to England to be surprised 
that those men whose cause cannot bear the lioht are afraid 

o 

of free speech. (Cheers.) I have had practice of more 
than twenty-five years in the presence of mobs and riots, 
opposing those very men whose representatives now attempt 
to forestall free speech. (Hear.) Little by little, I doubt 
not, I shall be permitted to speak to-night. (Hear.) Little 
by little, I have been permitted, in my own country, to speak, 
until at last the day has come there when nothing but the 
utterance of speech for freedom is popular. (Cheers.) You 
have been pleased to speak of me as one connected with the 
great cause of progress in civil and religious liberty. I covet 
no higher honor than to have my name joined as one among 
the list of that great company of noble Englishmen from 
whom we derived our doctrines of liberty. (Cheers.) For 
although I understand there is some opposition to what are 
called American ideas, what are these American ideas ? The 
seed-corn we got in England — (hear) ; and if, on a larger 
sphere, and under circumstances of unobstruction, we have 
reared mightier sheaves, every sheaf contains the grain that 
has made old England rich for a hundred years. (Great 
cheering.) I am, also, not a little gratified that my first 
appearance to speak on secular topics in England is in this 



9 

goodly town of jManchester, for I had mther have praise from 
men who undei-stand the quality praised, than from those 
who speak at hazard, and w^ith little acquaintance with th« 
subject. (Hear.) And where else, more than in these 
great central portions of England, have the doctrines of 
human rights been battled for, and where else have there 
been gained for them nobler victories than here ? (Cheers.) 
It is not indiscriminate praise, therefore ; you know what you 
talk about. You have had practice in these doctrines your- 
selves, and to be praised by those who are illustrious is praise 
indeed. (Cheers.) 

Allusion has been made bj' one of the gentlemen — a 
cautionary allusion, a kind of deference evidently paid to 
some supposed feeling — an allusion has been made to words 
or deeds of mme, that might be supposed to be offensive to 
Enghshmen, (Hear.) I cannot say how that maybe. I 
am sure that I have never thought, in the midst of this 
mighty stmggle, which has taxed every power and energy in 
our land — (" Oh," and cheers) — I have never stopped to 
measure and to think whether my words, spoken for truth 
and fidelity to duty, would be liked in this shape or in that 
shape, by one or another person. (Cheers.) I have had 
one simple, honest purpose, which I have pursued ever since 
I have been in public life, and that was, with all the strength 
that Grod has given to me, to maintain the cause of the poor 
and of the weak in my own country. (Cheers.) And if, 
in the height and heat of conflict, some words have been over 
sharp, and some positions have been taken heedlessly, are 
you the men to call one to account? (Hear.) A\Tiat if 
some exquisite French dancing-master, standing on the edge 
of a battle, w^here some Pvichard Coeur de Leon swung his 
axe, criticised him, by saying that " it violated the propriety 
1* 



10 



of the danciiig-room in the midst of battle." (Laughter.) 
When dandies fight, they think how thej look, but when men 
fight, they think about what they are doing. (Cheers.) 

But I am not here either on trial or on defence. (Heai-, 
hear.) I am very willing to tell you what I think about 
England, or anybody, but T am not willing to tell you what 
I think about myself. (Cheers.) Let me say one word, 
however, in the beginning, in regard to this meei:ing, and the 
peculiar gi-atiSeation which I feel in it. I have ground, and 
God is my judge, and bears witness to the truth of what I 
say. I can return to my countrymen, and bear witness to the 
cordial kindness of Englishmen towards America. (Cheers.) 
There has been serious doubt. The same agencies which 
have been at work to misrepresent good men in our country to 
you, have been at work to misrepresent to us good men here ; 
and when I say to my friends in America that I have at- 
tended such a meeting as this, received such an address, and 
beheld such enthusiasm, it will be a renewed pledge of amity. 
(Cheers.) I have never ceased to feel that war between 
two such o-reat nationalities as these would be one of the 
most unpardonable and atrocious offences that the world ever 
beheld — (cheers) — and I have regarded everytliing, there- 
fore, which needlessly led to this feeling, out of v/nich war 
comes, as being in itself wicked. (Cheers.) The same 
blood is in us. (Cheers.) We are your children, or the 
childien of your fathers and ancestors. You and we hold 
the same substantial doctrines. (Cheers, and cries of "Turn 
him out/') We have the same mission amongst the nations 
of the earth. Never were mother and daughter set forth to 
do so queenly a thing in the kingdom of God's glory as Eng- 
land and America. (Cheers.) And if you ask why we are 
so sensitive, and why have we hewu England with our tongue 



11 

as we have, I will tell yuu why. There is no man who can 
offend 3^ou so deeply as the one you love most. (Loud 
cheers.) Men point to France and Napoleon, and say he has 
been joint, step by step, in all England has done, and why 
are the press of America silent against France, and why do 
they speak as they do against England ? It is because we 
love England. (Cheers.) 

I have lived through a whole period and revolution of feeling. 
X remember very well in my boyhood the then recent war of 
1812, and tlie embers kindled in the Revolutionary War of in- 
dependence, an almost universal feehng against the Britishers, 
as they were called, and I have seen that feehng httle by lit- 
tle dying out ; and, what with conunon commercial interests, 
with reciprocal blessinirs in civilitv and in relio'ion, with mul- 
tiplied interchanges of friendly visits, there has come to be a 
feelino- in America most cordial and admirino; of Enjrland. 
For when we searched our principles, they all run back to 
rights in English history ; when we looked at those institu- 
tions of which we were most proud, we beheld that the foun- 
dations of them, and the very foundation stones, were taken 
from your history ; when we looked for those men that had 
illustrated our own tongue, — orators, or eloquent ministers of 
the gospel, — they were English ; we bon-owed nothing from 
France but here a fashion and there a gesture or a custom, 
but what we had to dignify humanity — that made life worth 
having — were all brought from Old England. (Cheers.) 
And do you suppose that under such ciicumstances, with this 
growing love, with this growing pride, with this gladness to 
feel that we were being associated in the historic glory of Eng- 
land, because both you and we Ijelong to a race — to the 
Anglo-Saxon race — do you suppose that it was with feelings 
of mdiiference that we beheld in our midst the heir-apparent 



12 

to tlie British throne ? (Cheers.) There is not reigning on 
the globe a sovereign who commands our simple, unpreten- 
tious, and unaffected respect, as your own beloved Queen in 
America. (Loud cheers.) I have heard multitudes of men 
say that if there was nothing for the heir-apparent, it was 
their joy and their pleasure to pay respect to him, that his 
mother might know that through him the compliment was 
meant to her. (Loud cheers.) It was an unarranged and 
unexpected, spontaneous and universal outbreak of popular 
enthusiasm; it began in the colonies of Canada, the fire 
rolled across the border, all throuo;h New Enoland, all 
through New York and Ohio, down through Pennsylvania 
and the adjacent States ; nor was the element quenched until 
it came to Richmond. I said, and many said, the past of 
enmity and prejudice is now rolled away down below the 
horizon of memory, a new era is come, and we have set oui' 
hand and voices as a sacred seal to our cordial affection and 
cooperation with England. (Cheers.) Now (whether we 
interpreted it aright or not is not the question) when we 
thought England was seeking opportunity of going with the 
South against us of the North, it hurt us as no other nation's 
conduct could hurt us on the face of the globe ; and if we 
spoke some words of intemperate heat, we spoke them in the 
mortification of disappointed affection. (Cheers.) It has 
been supposed that I have aforetime urged or threatened war 
with England. Never. (Cheers, followed by a few gi'oans, 
in reference to which the speaker remarked : "I have spoken 
on the prairies where buffaloes bellowed before." The ob- 
servation provoked loud laughter.) This I have said, — and 
this I repeat now, and here, — that the cause of constitutional 
government and of universal liberty, as associated with it in 
our country was so dear, so sacred, that rather than betray it, 



13 



we would give the kvSt child we had ; tliat we would not 
relinquish this conflict though other States rose, and entered 
into a league with tlie South ; and that, if it were necessary, 
we would maintain tliis great doctrine of representative gov- 
ernment in America against the armed world — ao-ainst Eno;- 
land and France. (Great cheeiing, followed by some dis- 
turbance, in reference to which the chairman rose and cau- 
tioned an individual under the gallery whom he had observed 
persisting ininteiTuption.) Let me be permitted to say, then, 
that it seems to me the darker days, in so far as embroilment 
between this country and America is concerned, are past. 
(Cheers.) The speech of Earl Russell (renewed cheer- 
ing) will go far toward satisfying our people. Under- 
stand me ; we shall not accept his views of the past, and the 
doctrines which he has propounded. (Cheers.) But the 
statement of the present attitude of the goveriunent of Great 
Britain, and its intentions for the future, coupled with the 
detention of those armed ships of war, — that will take away 
the sting from the minds of our people. (Hear, hear.) 
And, although we differ with you in respect to the great doc- 
trine of belligerency, the time is past to discuss that, except 
as a question of history and of civil law. We have drifted 
so far away from the period in which it was of any use to dis- 
cuss that, and the circumstances of the war and your circum- 
stances have so far changed, that now we can na longer stop 
to discuss whether it was or was not right for Great Britain to 
assume this position she has assumed. She has for years acted 
upon it and will not change it ; and now all that we can ask 
is, — Let there be a thorough neutrality. (Loud cheers.) I 
believe there will be one. (Resumed cheers.) • If you do 
not send us a man, we do not ask for a man. If you do not 
send us another pound of powder, we are able to make our 



u 

own powder, (Laughter.) If you do not send us another 
musket, nor another cannon, we have cannon that will carry 
five miles already. (Laughter.) We do not ask for mate- 
rial help. We shall be grateful for m-oral sympathy 
(cheers) ; but if you cannot give us moral sympathy, we 
shall still endeavor to do without it. But all that we say is. 
Let France keep away, let England keep hands off; if we 
cannot manage this rebellion by ourselves, then it shan't be 
managed at all . ( C heers . ) 

The question of war, under the circumstances in which 
war is now carried on in our country, is simply a question of 
time. (Cheers.) The population is with the North. The 
wealth is with the North. (Cheers.) The education is with 
the North. (Cheers.) The right doctrines of civil govern- 
ment are with the North. (Cheers, and a voice, " Where's 
the justice ? " ) It will not be long before one thing more will 
be with the North, — victory. (Loud and enthusiastic rounds 
of cheers.) Men on this side are impatient at the long de- 
lay; but if we can bear it, can't you ? (Laughter.) You 
are quite at ease ("Not yet"); we are not. You are 
not materially affected in any such degree as many parts of 
our own land are now. (Cheers.) But if the day shall 
come in one year, in two years, or in ten years hence, when 
the old stars and stripes shall float over every State of Amer- 
ica — (Loud cheers and some disturbance from one or two.) 
Oh, let him (the chief disturber) have a chance. (Laugh- 
ter.) We will take a turn about: I will say the sentences, 
and you shall make the responses. (Laughter.) I am a 
Congregationalist, but I can make a very good Episcopal 
minister, too. (Loud laughter.) I was saying, when inter- 
rupted by that sound from the other side of the house, that if 
the day shall come, in one or five or ten j^ears, in which the 



15 



old honored and historic banner shall float again over every 
State of the South ; if the day shall come when that which 
was the accursed cause of this dire and atrocious war — sla- 
very — shall he done away, (cheers); if the day shall 
have come when through all the Gulf States there shall be 
liberty of speech, as there never has been, (cheers) ; if 
the day shall come when there shall be liberty of the press, 
as there never has been ; if the day shall come when men 
shall have common schools to send their children to, v/hich 
they never have had in the South; if the day shall come 
when the land shall not be parcelled in gigantic plantations, 
in the hands of a few rich oligarchs (loud cheers,), but 
shall be parcelled out to honest farmers, every man owning 
his little (renewed cheers) ; in short, if the day shall come 
when the simple ordinances, the fraition and privileges of 
civil liberty, shall prevail in every part of the United States, 
it will be worth all the dreadful blood, and" tears, and woe. 
(Loud cheers.) You are impatient ; and yet God dwelleth 
in eternity, and has an infinite leisure to roll forward the af- 
fairs of men, not to suit the hot impatience of those who are but 
children of a day, and cannot wait or linger for long, but ac- 
cording to the infinite circle on which he measures time and 
events. He expedites or retards as it pleases him ; and if he 
heard our cries or prayers, not thrice would the months re- 
volve but peace would come. But the strong crying and 
prayers of millions have not brought peace, but only thicken- 
ing war. We accept the Providence ; the duty is plain. 
(Cheers and interruption.) I repeat, the duty is plain. 
(Cheers.) So rooted is this English people in the faith of 
liberty, that it were an utterly hopeless task for any minion 
or sympathizer of the South to sway the popular sympathy of 
England, if this English people believed that this was none 



16 

other than a conflict "between liberty and slavery. It is just 
that. (Loud cheers.) I am here, to be sure, in some points 
to cite history, but for the most part I stand a witness to tes- 
tify what I have seen of things, with which I have intimately 
mingled, which have been common to me since my boyhood, 
— things which I do know, and which history will establish 
beyond all peradventure or controversy. 

But let me go back a little before my time, for I am not 
yet one hundred years old. (Laughter. ) Slavery was in- 
troduced into our country at a time, and in a manner, when 
England nor America knew well what were the results of 
that atrocious system. It was ignorantly received and prop- 
agated on our side ; little by little it spread through all the 
thirteen States that then were ; for slavery in the beginning 
was in New England, such as now it is in the Southern States. 
But when the great struggle of our lievolution came on, the 
study of the doctrines of human rights had made such prog- 
ress that the whole public mind began to think it was wrong 
to wage war to defend our rights, while we were holding men 
in slavery, depriving them of theirs. It is an historical fact, 
that all the great and renowned men that flourished at the 
period of our Bevolution were abolitionists. Washington was ; 
so was Benjamin Franklin ; so was Thomas Jeflferson ; so 
was James Monroe ; so were the principal Virginian and 
Southern statesmen ; and the first abolition society ever found- 
ed in America was founded not in the North, but in the Mid- 
dle and a portion of the Southern States. (Cheers.) After 
the Declaration of Independence, and the adoption of our Con- 
stitution, slavery began to cease. It never had been a very 
abundant institution in New England, because the habits of 
the people and their conscientious convictions did not make 
them gTeat friends of slavery. It has been said, they sold 



17 

their slaves, and preached a cheap emancipation tj the South. 
Slavery ceased in this Tvise in Massachusetts. Suit was 
brought for the services of a slave, and the Chief Justice de- 
clared the declaration of the equality of all men and their 
right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness was 
equivalent to a bill of emancipation, and he refused to render 
back that slave's services. At a later period, New York 
brought an emancipation act. It has been said that she sold 
her slaves. No slander was ever greater. The most careful 
provision was made. No man travelling out of the State of 
New York, after the passing of the emancipation act, was 
permitted to have any slave with him, unless he gave bonds 
for his reappearance with him. As a matter of fiict the slaves 
were emancipated without compensation on tlie spot, to take 
effect gradually class by class. But after a trial of half a 
score of years, the people found this gradual emancipation was 
intolerable. (Hear, hear.) It is like gradual amputation. 
They therefore met together, and by another act of legisla- 
tion they declared immediate emancipation (hear), and 
that took effect ; and so slavery perished in the State of New 
York. Substantially so it was in New Jersey, and in Penn- 
sylvania ; substantially so it may be said, in respect to the 
Northern States, that there never was an example of nations 
that emancipated slaves so purely from moral conviction of 
the wrong of slavery. I know that it is said that Northern 
capital and Northern ships were employed in the slave trade. 
To an extent it was so. But is there any community that 
lives in which there are not miscreants who violate the public 
feeling? (Cheers.) Then and since, the man who dared to 
use his capital and his ships in this infamous traffic hid him- 
self, and did by agents what he was ashamed to be known to 
have done himself. (Hear.) No man in the North who had 



18 



part or lot in tliis iiifanious traflic in slaves, but would nave 
been branded with the mark of Cain. (Cheers.) It is time 
that New York port has been employed in this infernal traf- 
fic, but it was because it was unfortunately under the influ- 
ence either of that democratic party that is in alliance with 
the Southern slavery (hear, hear), or because it v/as 
under the dark political control of the South itself. For 
when the South could appoint our marshals, when the South 
appointed through the administration the secretaries of the 
treasury, and the officers of the custom-houses in all parts of 
the country, when everything by the political machinery of 
the South v/as favoring slavery, it could not but be that 
there should be the ranning of the gauntlet in our ports, and 
that the slave-trade should be carried on ; but it was by the 
immense majority of the people abhorred, and the men who 
did it were detested. (Cheers.) There was one Judas ; is 
Christianity therefore a hoax ? (Hear.) There are hissing 
men in this audience ; are you not respectable? (Cheers 
and laughter. ) The folly of the few is that light which God 
casts to irradiate the wisdom of the many. (Hear.) But 
when the Constitution itself was formed, there was such a feel- 
ing opposed to slavery that you are familiar with the fact that 
Mr. Madison and Mr. Eandolph refused to permit the word 
" servitude " to go into that docu-ment, and on this express 
ground, that the time would come when slavery was to end, 
and that they would not have the memorial of such a disgrace 
remaining in the great charter of our liberties. (Cheers.) 
So the word was changed from " servitude " to " service." 
(Hear.) 

And let me say one word here about the Constitution of 
America. It recognizes slavery as a fact ; but it does not 
recognize the doctrine of slavery in any way whatever. It 



WW 



19 



WcTS a fact. It lay before the ship of state as a rock lies in 
tlie channel of the sliip as she goes into harbor; and be- 
cause a ship steers round a rock, does it follow that that rock 
is in the ship? (''Hear," and laughter.) And because 
the Constitution of the United States made some circuits to 
steer round that great fact, does it follow that therefore 
slavery is recognized in the Con.stitution as a right or sys- 
tem? (No.) See how carefully that immortal document 
worded itself. In the slave laws, the slave is declared to be 
— what? Expressly, and by the most repetitious phrase- 
ology, he is denuded of all the attributes and characteristics 
of manhood, and is pronounced a "chattle." (Shame.) 
Now, you have just that same word with the k left out — 
" cattle." (Hear, hear.) And the difference between 
cattle and chattle is the difference between quadruped and 
biped. (Laughter.) So far as animate property is con- 
cerned, and so far as inanimate property is concerned, it is 
just the difference between locomotive propei-ty and station- 
ary property. (Hear, hear.) Now, all the Slave States 
stand, on the radical principle that a slave is not for purposes 
of law any longer to be ranked in the category of human 
beings, but that he is a piece of property, and to be treated, 
to all intent: and purposes, as a piece of property; and the 
law did not blush, nor do the judges blush, nowadays, 
who interpret that law. (Hear.) But how is it that the 
Constitution of the United States, when it begins to speak of 
these very same slaves, names them? Does it call them 
"slaves " ? Does it speak of them as in " servitude " ? It 
lifts itself up as if consciously inspired with the grandeur of 
the thought and dignity of man, and says, " Persons held in 
slavery." (Hear and cheers.) Go to South Carolina, and 
ask what she calls slaves, and it says "things;" and the 



20 

old capitol, at Washington, sullenly reverberates, " No ; per- 
sons ! " (Cheers.) Go to South Carolina, and her funda- 
mental article says she looks upon slaves as " things; " and 
again the Constitution echoes, "No; persons." (Hear.) 
Gro to the charter of Louisiana with their constitution, or to 
the southwestern Slave States, and still that doctrine of devils 
is enunciated — it is "chattle," it is "thing." Looking 
upon those for whom Christ felt mortal anguish in Geth- 
semane, and stretched himself on death in Calvary, their 
laws call them still, "things," and " chatties ; " and still, in 
suppressed tones of thunder, the Constitution of the United 
States says " Persons." (Cheers.) 

What was it, then, when the country had advanced so far 
toward universal emancipation, in the period of our national 
formation, that stopped this onward tide? Two things, 
commercial and political. First, the wonderful demand for 
cotton throughout the world, coupled with the facility of 
producing it, arising from the invention of the cotton gin, 
that introduced a new element of value. Slaves that before 
had been worth from three hundred to four hundred dollars, 
began to be worth five hundred dollars. That knocked 
away one-third of our adherence to the moral law. Then 
afterwards they became worth seven hundred dollars, and 
half the law went — (cheers and laughter) ; then eight 
hundred or nine hundred dollars, and then there was no 
such thing as moral law — (cheers and laughter) ; then one 
thousand or twelve hundred dollars, and slavery became one 
of the beatitudes on the Mount. (Cheers and laughter.) 
When IMoses wrote his laws, delivered by the Highest, he 
wrote them on tables of stone ; but when the Devil, through 
his minion, wrote his laws, he wrote them on silver. 
(Cheers and loud laughter.) Their pocket is their Mount 



21 



Slnal — (cheers and laughter) ; they are the lineal descend- 
ants of those men who before worshipped tlie golden calf. 
(Cheers.) 

The other cause which prevented the progress of emanci- 
pation, that had already so auspiciously begun, was the 
political cause. The policy of America has been shaped by 
the essential spirit of slave-holding Southerners. All the 
aggression, the fiUbuster, — all the threats to England, and 
the tauntings of Europe , — and all the belligerence our 
government has assumed, hiive been under the inspiration, 
and under the almost monarchical sway of the Southern 
oligarchy. (Loud cheering). And now, since Britain has 
been snubbed by the Southerners, and threatened by the 
Southerners, and domineered over by the Southerners — 
(■' No ") — yet now. Great Britain has thrown her arms of 
love around the Southerners, and turns from the Northern- 
ers. (No). She don't"? (Cheers.) I have only to say that 
she has been caught in very suspicious circumstances. 
(Laughter.) But I have said it, perhaps, as much as 
anything else, for this very sake, — to bring out from you 
this expression ; to let you know what we know that all 
the hostility felt in my country toward Great Britain 
has been sudden ; and I want you to say to me, and 
through me, to my countrymen, that those irritations against 
the North, and those likings for the South, that have been 
expressed in your papers, are not the feelings of the great 
mass of your nation. (Great cheering, the audience rising.) 
Those cheers already sound in my ears as the coming accla- 
mations of friendly nations; those waving handkerchiefs 
are the white banners that symoolize peace for all countries. 
(Cheers.) Join with us, then, Britons. (Cheers.) From 
you we learnt the doctrine of what a man was worth ; from 



m 



you we iGamt to detest all oppressions ; from yon we learnt 
that it ^Ya3 the noblest tiling a man couid do, to die for a 
principle. (Cheers). And now, when we are set in that 
very course, and are giving our best blood for principle, let 
the world understand that when America strikes for the li}> 
erty of the slave, and of the common people^ Great Britain 
indorses her. (Cheers.) 

And now I come to the period in which I, myself, became 
an actor. (Loud cheers.) From that time to this time, 
there has been no important movement on the subject of 
public affairs in the connection of slavery, that I have not 
either had a part in it, or been a most interested and inti- 
mate obrerver of it, and I shall tell you not what I believe, 
but what I know. (Hear, hear.) It was extremely diffi- 
cult to get the voice of the public. Those that first at- 
tempted it were made wellnigh marij^'s. I remember full 
well wjien Burness Prest v/as mobbed in Cincinnati, and 
drajrofed into the Ohio, for no other reason than for anti-slav- 
ery sentimciiis. I remember the early martja^doms, and for 
two years, with my pockets filled with pistols, — to the hor- 
ror, I suppose, of those peace-loving slavery men, — I pa- 
trolled the streets, made a special constable for the defence 
of these poor creatures' houses. T suppose it was very 
naughty to meddle with fire-arms ; but then I was not a min- 
ister ; then I was only a student for the ministry, and I did not 
fire the pistols off once. Mr. Weld, Mr. Garrison, Allan Stew- 
art, now gone, and a multitude of men whom I ought to have 
prepared myself to mention, that I might not, in mentioning 
the few, seem to neglect the many, — these were the pio- 
neers. You have been pleased to say in this address, that I 
have been one of those pioneers. I unloosed the shoe-latch- 
ets of the pioneers, and that is all. I was but little more 



than a boy ; and I bear witness that the hardest blows and 
the most cruel sufferings were endured by men before I was 
thrust far enough into public life to take any particular 
share, and I do not consider myself entitled to rank amcngst 
the pioneers. They were better men than I. Those noble 
men did resist this downward tendency of the North. They 
wore rejected by society. To be called an abolitionist, ex- 
cluded a man from respectable society in those days. To be 
called an abolitionist, blighted any man's prospects in politi- 
cal life in those days. To be called an abolitionist, marked 
a man's store, — his very customers avoided him as if he 
had the plague. To be called an abolitionist, in those days, 
shut up the doors of confidence from him in the church, and 
he was regarded as a disturber of the peace. Nevertheless 
they maintained then* testimony. (Loud cheers,) Little 
by little, they gained the conscience, — they gained the un- 
derstanding. And as, when old Luther spoke, thundering 
in the ears of Europe the long-buried treasures of the Bible, 
there were hosts against him, and the elect few, nevertheless, 
gathered little by little, themselves. Many Luthers thun- 
dered God's truth of human liberty, and they were followed 
more and more for half a score of years, until they began to 
be numerous enough to be an influential party in the State 
elections. (Cheers ) 

In 1848, I think it was, when that Buffalo platform was 
laid ; it was the first endeavor of the Northern States to 
form a platform that should carry rebuke to the slave- 
holding ideas in the North. Before this, however, there 
was help given us from the South ; and I can say that, un- 
der God, the South have done more to bring on this work 
of emancipation than the North itself. (Hear, hear.) 
First, they began to declare, after the days of Mr. Calhoun, 



24 



that tliey accepted slavery no more as a misfortune, but as a 
divine blessing. Mr. Calhoun advanced the doctrine, which 
is now the marrow of secession, that it was the duty of gov- 
ernment, not merely to protect States from interference, but 
that it was the duty of the general government to make slavery 
equal with liberty. (Cheers.) These monstrous doctrines 
began to be the development of future ambitions. The South, 
having the control of government, knew from the inherent 
weakness of their system, that if it were confined, it was as 
a huge flock of herds pasturing on small pastures, that soon 
gnaws the grass to the roots, and must have other pasture or 
it dies, (Cheers.) Slavery is of such a nature that if you 
do not give it continual change of feeding-ground, it must 
die. (Renewed cheering.) And then came, one after an- 
other the assertions of the South of rights never dreamed of. 
From them came the Mexican war for territory ; from them 
came Texas and its entrance as a Slave State ; from them 
came that organized rowdyism in Congress that browbeat 
every Northern man who had not sworn fealty to slavery ; 
that filled all the courts of Europe with ministers holding 
slave doctrines ; that gave the majority of the seats on the 
bench to slave-owning judges ; and that gave, in fact, all 
our chief offices of trust to either slave-owners, or to men 
who licked tlie feet of slave-holding men. (Loud cheers.) 
Then came that ever-memorable period, when, for the very 
purpose of humbling the North, and making her drink the 
bitter cup of humiliation, and making them understand that 
the North was inferior, and the South their natural lords, 
was passed the Fugitive Slave Bill. (Loud hisses,) There 
was no need of that. There was already existing just as 
good an instrument for so infernal a purpose as any fiend 
could have wished. Against that infamy my soul revoltedj 



and these lips protested, and I defied to its face the govern- 
ment, and told them, " I will have none of your unrighteous 
laws ; send to me that fugitive who is fleeing from his master, 
and I will step between him and his pursuer." (Loud 
and prolonged cheers.) Not once nor twice have my 
doors shut between oppression and the oppressed ; and 
the church itself over which I minister has been the un- 
known refuge of many and many a one. (Cheers.) But 
whom the Devil promises he cheats. (Laughter.) That 
peace that was the thirty pieces of silver paid for the Christ 
of man, turned into fire, and burnt the hands that took it. 
For how long was it after this promised peace that the 
Missouri Compromise was abolished in an infamous disregard 
of holy compacts? (Loud cheers.) It never ought to 
have been made ; but havmg been made, it ought never to 
have been broken by the South, (Cheers.) And with no 
other pretence than the robber's pretence that might makes 
right, they did destroy it, that they might carry slavery far 
North. That was what was needed to arouse the long-reluc- 
tant patriotism of the North. (Cheers.) By the abolition 
of this compromise another Slave Sfate was immediately to 
have been brought into the Union to balance the ever-grow- 
mg free territories of the Northwest. Then it was that there 
arose a majesty that had no record thus far, and has had no 
parallel, and instead of merely protesting, young men and 
maidens, laboring men, farmers, and mechanics, all of them 
sped with a sacred desire to rescue free territory from the 
toils of slavery, and emigrated in hundreds and in thou- 
sands, that when this territory should come in to vote, it 
should vote as a Free State. (Loud cheers.) A more infa- 
mous and atrocious system of cheating never was practised 
than that by which the South sought, by perjury, by intirai- 
2 



26 

dation, by the prostituted use of the United States army, to 
force a vile system upon these unwilling men who had voted 
almost unanimously for liberty and against slavery in that 
State. (Hear.) 

But at last the day of utter darkness had passed, and the 
gray twilight was on the morning of the horizon. At last, 
for the first time, I believe, in the whole conflict between the 
South and the North, the victory went to the North, and 
Kansas became a Free State. (Cheers.) Kansas became 
an impulse that was given to popular feeling, and in 1853 
Mr. Fremont was nominated for the presidency. He came 
so near to being elected that, but for an enormous cheating 
in the polls at Pennsylvania, he would have been elected ; 
but, instead of Mr. Fremont, Mr. Buchanan was returned. 
(Hisses.) We aimed at an eagle and hit a buzzard. 
(Laughter.) Now I call you to witness that in a period 
of twenty-five or thirty years of constant conflicts with the 
South, at every single step they gained the advantage, with 
the single exception of Kansas. AVhat was the conduct of 
the North? Did they threaten secession? (No.) Did 
they threaten violence? (No.) So sure were they of the 
ultimate triumph of that which was right, provided free speech 
was left to combat error and wrong, that they patiently bided 
their time. By this time, the North was cured of its love of 
or indifference to slavery. By this time, anew conscience 
had been formed in the North, and a vast majority of all the 
Northern men at this time stood fair and square on the doc- 
trine of anti-slavery. (Cheers.) It went through all the 
quicksands of that infamous demonstration of four years, in 
which senators, sworn by the Constitution, were plotting 
machinations to destroy the government, in which the mem- 
bers of the cabinet, who drew their pay month by month, 



27 

used their time and their official position to steal arms, to 
prepare fortifications, to make ready, and in which the most 
astounding spectacle that the world ever saw, was witnessed, 
— our great people paying men to sit in the places of power 
and office to betray them. (Hear, hear.) During all those 
four years what did we ? We protested and waited, and 
said, " God shall give us the victory, for it is God's truth 
that we wield-, and God's truth we promote, and with God, 
in his own good time, shall be the giving of the victory." 
(Great cheering.) In all this time we never made an inroad 
on the rights of the South. (Cheers.) We never asked 
for retaliatory law. We never taxed their commerce, or 
touched it with our little finger. We envied them none of 
their manufactures ; but sought to promote them. We did 
not attempt to abate, by one ounce, their material prosperity; 
we longed for their prosperity. (Cheers.) Slavery we 
always hated ; the Southern men never. (Cheers.) They 
were wrong. And in our conflicts with them, we have felt 
as all men in conflict feel. We were jealous, and so were 
they. We were in the right cause, they in the wrong. 
(Cheers.) We never envied them their territory; audit 
was in the heart and it was the faith of the whole Xorth, 
that, in seeking for the abatement of slavery, and its final 
abolition, we were conferring upon the South the greatest 
boon which one nation, or part of a nation, could confer 
upon another. That she was to come down, and pass 
through the valley of humiliation, during the progress of 
her institutions, till she passed from forced labor to free 
labor, I have no doubt ; but it was nit in our heart to hum- 
ble her ; but rather to help and sympathize with her. I 
defy time and history to point to a more honorable conduct 
than that of the free North toward the South, during all 
these days. 



28 

In 1860, Mr. Lincoln was elected. (Cheers.) I ask you 
to take notice of the conduct of the two sides at this point. 
For thirty years we had heen experiencing sectional defeats 
at the hands of the Southerners. For thirty years and more 
we had seen our sons proscribed, because loyal to liberty, or 
worse than proscribed, — suborned, and made subservient to 
slavery. (Cheers.) We had seen our judges corrupt, our 
ministers apostate, our merchants running headlong after 
gold against principle ; but we maintained our fealty to the 
law and Constitution, and had faith in victory by legitimate 
means. But when, by the means pointed out by the Con- 
stitution, and sanctified by the usage of three-quarters of a 
century, Mr. Lincoln, in a fair open field, was elected Presi- 
dent of the United States, did the South submit? (Cries of 
"No," and cheers.) No offence had been committed, — 
none threatened ; but the arrogation was that the election of 
a man known to be pledged against the extension of slavery 
was not compatible with the safety of slavery in the South, 
and on that ground they took steps for secession. Every 
honest mode to prevent it, all patience on the part of the 
North, all pusillanimity on the part of Mr. Buchanan ; while 
he still sat, before his successor came into office, he left noth- 
ing undone to make matters worse, did nothing to make 
things better. The North was patient then, the South im- 
patient. Then came the steps. The question was put to 
the South, and with the exception of South Carolina, every 
State in the South gave a popular vote against secession ; 
and yet, such was the jugglery of political leaders, before a 
few months had passed, they had precipitated every State into 
secession. That could never have been where thei-e were 
common people. The South has common herds of people, 
the North had herds of what Lord Brougham lamentably 



29 



termed mobs. Lord Brougham, upon whose plenitude of 
days the light of God shone so gloriously, is bringing his 
failing days to scandalize the intelligent people of the North, 
by calling them mobs. (Cheers and counter cheers.) 

I call you to take notice that the people of the South 
thought the government of the States could not be adminis- 
tered by an honest man without prejudice to slavery. It 
could not. The government of the United States is such 
that, if it be administered equitably, still, in the long run, it 
would destroy slavery, and it was the prospect of this that 
led the South to make precipitate secession. (Cheers.) Now 
against all these facts, it is attempted to make England be- 
lieve that slavery has had nothing to do with this War. 
(Laughter.) You might as well have attempted to persuade 
Noah that the clouds had nothing to do with the flood ; per- 
haps some man will persuade you that palm-trees and orange- 
trees will grow at the North Pole ; perhaps some one will 
persuade you next that there is no sand in the gi-eat desert. 
It is the most monstrous absurdity ever born in the womb of 
folly. (Cheers.) Nothing to do with slavery ! It had to 
do with nothing else. (Cheers.) Slavery was the mother 
of Rebellion. (Cheers.) The father of it was, — Oh, no, we 
never mention him. (Much laughter.) Against this with- 
ering fact, against this damning allegation, what is their 
escape ? The attempt is to say, the North is just as bad 
as the South. (Laughter.) Now, we are coming to the marrow 
of it. (Cheers.) If the North is as bad as the South, why 
did not the South find it out before you did? If the 
North has been in favor of oppressing the black man, and 
just as much in favor of slavery of the South, how is it that 
the South has gone to war against the North because of their 
belief to the contrary? (A voice : " Slavery does not pay 

2* 



30 

in tile Nortt I ' ^) Gentlemen, I hold in my hand a pub- 
lished report of the speech of the amiable, intelligent, and 
credulous president, I believe, of the Society for Southern 
Independence. (Laughter.) I have some curiosities in it. 
(Laughter.) That you may know that Southerners are not 
all dead yet, I will read a paragraph : — 

The South had labored hitherto under the imputation, and 
it had constantly been thrown in the teeth of all who sup- 
ported that struggling nation, that they, by their proceedings, 
were tending to support the existence of slavery. This was 
an impression which he thought they ought carefully to en- 
deavor to remove. (Cheers, and laughter.) Because it 
was one which was injui'ious to their cause (cheers) , not only 
among those who had the feeling of all Englishmen — of a 
horror of slavery — but, also, because strong religious bodies 
in this country made a point of it, and felt it very strongly 
indeed. (Cheers ) 

I never like to speak behind a man's back. I like to speak 
right to men's faces what I have to say ; and I could wish 
that the higher felicity than that which has been accorded to 
me to-night might have been given, — to have had Lord 
WharnclifFe present, that I might address to him a few simple 
and artless Christian inquiries. (Cheers.) For there can 
be no question that there is a strong impression that the 
South has had something to do with slavery. (Cheers.) In- 
deed, on our side of the water, there are many persons that 
affirm it. (Laughter and cheers.) And, as his lordship 
thinks that it is the pecuHar duty of this now agglomerated 
and agglutinated association for Southern independence to do 
away with that impression, I beg to submit to them that, in 
the first place, they ought to do away with four million 
slaves in the South ; for I, for my own part, cannot say but 
that I think there are uncharitable men enough living in this 



31 



world to think that a nation that has four million slaves in it 
has a good deal to do with supporting slavery. (Cheers.) 
And when he has done that, it might perhaps be pertinent to 
suggest to his lordship that there should be a little something 
done to the Montgomery Constitution of the South, which is 
changed from the old Federal Constitution in only one or two 
points, the most essential of which is that it introduces and 
legalizes slavery, and makes it unconstitutional ever to do it 
away ; and they are under that constitution. Now, I sub- 
mit that that wants scrubbing a little. (Cheers.) Then I 
would also respectfully lay at his lordship's feet — more 
beautifully embossed, if I could, than this addressed to me 
is — the speech of Vice-President Stephens (hear, hear) in 
which he declares that all nations have been mistaken, and 
that the subjugation of an inferior race is the only proper 
way to maintain the liberty of a superior; in which he 
teaches Calvary a new lesson ; in which he gives the He into 
the face of the Saviour himself, who came to teach us that 
by as much as a man was stronger than another, he owed 
himself to that other. (Loud cheers.) Not alone are Christ's 
blood-drops our salvation, but those word-drops of sacred 
truth which cleanse the heart and conscience by the expres- 
sion of precious truths and principles, themselves are our 
salvation, as well as the atoning blood ; and if there be in 
the truths of Christ one more eminent than another, it is, 
" He that would be chief, let him be the servant of all." But 
this audacious hierarch of infidelity, Mr. Stephens,- in the 
face of God, and before mankind, in this day of universal 
Christianity, declares that the way for a nation to have man- 
hood, is to crush out the libeity of an inferior and weaker 
race. And he declares ostentatiously and boastingly that 
the foundation of the Southern republic is on that corner- 

2*2 



m 

stone. (Loud cheers, '* No, no," and renewed cheers.) I 
beg leave, when next Lord WharnclifFe speaks for the edifica- 
tion of this delighted English people (laughter) , — I beg leave 
to submit that this speech of Mr. Stephens' requires a little 
scouring. (Applause.) And then, if all the other allega- 
tions and evidences that the South are upholding slavery are 
to be the peculiar work of the Southern Independence Asso- 
ciation, not Hercules, in his palmy days, had such work and 
wages before him as they have got. (Loud cheers.) We 
shan't be troubled with them. They will be knee-deep and 
elbow-deep in their business of scrubbing and scouring, and 
Lord Wharncliffe may bid farewell to the sweets of domestic 
leisure and to the pursuit of the interests of state, as all his 
amusements hereafter will be scrubbing and scouring. (Loud 
cheers.) But there is another precious paragraph that I 
will read : — 

He believed that the strongest supporters of slavery were 
the merchants of New York and Boston. He always under- 
stood, and had never seen the statement contradicted, that 
the whole of the ships fitted out for the transport of slaves 
from Africa to Cuba, were owned by Northerners. (Loud 
laughter. ) 

His lordship, if he will do me the honor to read my 
speech, shall hear it contradicted in the most explicit terms. 
There have been enough Northern ships engaged, but not by 
any means all, nor the most, Baltimore has a preciminence 
in that matter ; Charleston, and New Orleans, and Mobile, all 
of them. And those ships fitted out in New York were just 
as much despised, and loathed, and hissed by the honorable 
merchants of that great metropolis, as if they had put up the 
black flag of pu-acy. (Loud cheers.) Does it conduce to 
good feeling between two nations to make such atrocious 
glanders as those ? His lordship goes on to say : — 



38 

That in the Northern States the shive was placed in even a 
worse position than he was in ti^.e South. lie spoke from ex- 
perience, having visited the country twice. 

I am most surprised, and yet gratified, to learn that Lord 
WharnclifFe speaks of the suffering of the slaves from ex- 
perience. (Laughter and cheers.) I never was aware that 
he had been put in that unhappy situation. Has he toiled 
on the sugar plantation? Has he taken the night for his 
friend, avoiding the day ? Has he sped through cane-brakes, 
hunted by hounds, suffering hunger and heat and cold by 
turns, until he has made his way to the far Northern States ? 
(Cheers.) Has he had this experience ? The grammar is 
good. It is the word experience I call attention to. If liis 
lordship says that it is his observation I will accept the correc- 
tion. I continue, — 

In railway carnages and hotels, the negroes were treated 
as pariahs and outcasts, and never looked upon as men and 
brothers, but rather as dogs. (Cheers.) 

In all railway cars where Southerners travel, in all hotels 
where Southerners' money was the chief support, this is true. 
But allow me to say frankly that there has been some occa- 
sion for such a statement, and there has been a prejudice in 
the North against the negi'O. I speak this the more because 
it has been a part of my duty any time these last sixteen years to 
protest against it; and a well-dressed and well-behaved colored 
man has never had molestation or question on entering my 
church, and taking any seat he pleases in the whole house, 
• not because I had influence with my people to prevent it, but 
because God gave me a people whose own good sense and 
consciences led them to do it of their own accord. But from 
this vantage ground it has been my duty to mark out the un- 
righteous prejudice of which the colored people have suffered 



34 

in the North ; and it is a part of the great moral revolution 
which is going on, that the prejudices have been in a great 
measure vanquished, and are now wellnigh trodden down. 
In the city of New York there is one street railroad where 
colored people cannot ride, but in the others they may, and in 
all the railroads of New England there is not one railroad in 
which a colored man would be questioned if he rides there. I 
believe that the colored man may start from the line of the 
British dominions from the North and traverse all New Eng- 
land and New York till he touches the waters of the western 
lakes and never be molested or questioned, passing on as any 
decent white man would pass. But let me ask you how came 
there to be these prejudices ? They did not exist before the 
War of Independence. How did it grow up ? It grew up 
as one of the accursed offshoots of slavery. Where you make 
a race odious by oppression, all that belong to that race will 
participate in that odium, whether they be free or slave. And 
the South have maintained that institution which has made 
the African a prejudiced man even in the North. How next 
did that prejudice come to exist ? It was on account of the 
multitude of Irishmen who came to the States. (Cheers and 
interruption.) I declare my admiration for many of these 
people who have illustrated the page of history in every de- 
partment. It is part of the fruit of ignorance, and, as they 
allege, the oppression that they have suffered, that it has 
made them oppressors. I bear witness that there is no class 
of people in America who are so bitter against the colored 
people, and so eager for slavery, as the ignorant, the poor, im- 
instructed Lishmen. ("Oh," and "hear," and "Three 
cheers for old Ireland.") But although there have been 
wrongs done to them in the North, the condition of the free 
colored people in the North is unspeakably better than in the 



35 

South. They own their wives and children. (Hear, hear.) 
They have the right to select then* place and their kind of 
labor ; their rights of property are protected just as much as 
ours are. The right of education is accorded to them. 
There is in the city of New York more than ten milHon 
dollars of property owned by free colored people. 
(Hear.) They have their own schools; they have their 
own churches ; theu- own orators, and there is no more gifted 
man, and no man whose superb eloquence more deserves to 
be Hstened to than Frederick Douglas, (loud cheers) ; and if 
you think that he has too much white blood, then there is 
Samuel Ward, who is as black as black can be ; and if you 
can find any man in the South who is superior to him in 
sense, in logic, and in eloquence, you will find a man who 
has never yet appeared in any of then* councils. I say still 
further than that, that since the breaking out of this war, the 
good conduct of the slaves at the South, and the good con- 
duct of the free colored people at the North, has gone far to 
increase the kind feeluigs of the whites toward them ; and 
since they have begun to fight for their rights of manhood, 
there are beginning to be the elements of a popular enthusiasm 
for them. (Loud cheers. ) I will venture to say that there 
is no place on the earth where so many colored men stand in 
a position so auspicious for the futui'e as the free colored men 
and the freed" slaves of the South and of the North. (Cheers.) 
I meant to have said a good deal more to you than I have, or 
I shall have time to say. ("Go on.") I have endeavored 
to place before you those facts wliich go to show that slavery 
was the real cause of this war, and that if it came to the cita- 
tion of facts whether North or South were the most guilty in 
this matter, there could be no question, I think, before any 
honorable tribunal, any jury, any deliberative body, that the 



36 



decision will be that the South, from beginning to end, for the 
sake of slavery, has been aggressive, and the North patient. 
Since the war broke out, the North has been more and more 
coming upon the high ground of moral principle, until now 
the government has taken ground for emancipation, and has 
issued its Proclamation of Emancipation. (Grroans, and coun- 
ter cheers, and a voice, "Go home.") (There was at this 
point an outrageous interniption from a person in the gallery, 
who was removed.) 

It has been said very often in my hearing, and oftener I 
have read it since I have been in England, — the last reading 
I had of it was from the pen of Lord Brougham (hisses, 
and cries of "chair, chair," and disorder, which continuing 
for some time, Mr. Beecher sat down. When it had some- 
what subsided, he continued), — it is said that the North is 
fighting for the Union, and not for the emancipation of the 
African. Why are we fighting for the Union but because we 
beHeve that the Union and its government, administered now by 
Northern men, will work out the emancipation of every living 
being. (Loud cheering.) If it be meant that the North 
went into this war with the immediate object of the emanci- 
pation of the slaves, it never professed to do it ; but it went 
into war for the Union, with the distinct understanding on 
both sides, that if the Union was maintained slavery could not 
live long. (Cheers.) Do you suppose that it is wise to sep- 
arate the interest of the slave from the interest of the other 
people on the continent, and to inaugurate a pohcy which took 
in him alone ? He has got to stand or fall with all of us 
(hear, hear) ; and the only sound policy for the North is 
that policy which shall be for the benefit of the North, of the 
South, of the blacks, and of the whites. (Cheers.) And 
we hold that the maintenance of the Union, the funda- 



37 

mental principles which are contained in the Declaration of 
Independence and the Constitution, — that this is the way to 
secure to the African ultimately his rights and his best estate. 
So that in this way the North did come into tlie conflict with 
the prayer, the hope, rather than, I had almost said, the ex- 
pectation, that God would bless their endeavor to the perfection 
of liberty over all our continent. (Loud cheers.) The con- 
dition of the North was that of a ship canying passengers 
tempest-tossed, and while the sailors were laboring, and the 
captain and officers directing, some gi'umblers would come up 
from amongst the passengers and say, " You are all the time 
working to save the ship, but you don't care to save the 
passengers." I should like to know how you would save the 
passengers so well as by taking care of the ship. (At this 
point, the chairman read to the meeting the telegi-am, rela- 
tive to the seizure of the rams at Liverpool. The effect was 
starthng ; the audience rose to their feet, while cheer after 
cheer was given.) Allow me to say of the conduct of the col- 
ored people, our citizens (for in New York, colored people 
vote, as they do also m Massachusetts and in several other 
Northern States, Mr. '\^^larnclifFe — Lord "V\TiarnclifFe, I beg 
his pardon, — to the contrary notwithstanding), — that it is a 
subject of universal remark that no men on either side have 
carried themselves more gallantly, more bravely, than the col- 
ored regiments that have been fighting for their government 
and their liberty. IMy own youngest brother is colonel of one 
of those regiments, and from him I learn many of the most 
interesting facts concerning them. The son of one of the 
most estimable and endeared of my fiiends in my congregation, 
was the colonel of that regiment that charged at Fort Wag- 
ner. He fell at tlie head of his men, — hundreds fell, — 
and when inquest was made for liis body, it was repoited by 



38 



the men in the tbi t, that he had been bulled with his niggers ; 
and on his gravestone yet it shall be written, " The man that 
dared to lead the poor and the oppressed out of their oppres- 
sion, died with them and for them and was buried with them." 
(Cheers,) On the Mississippi, the conduct of the colored reg- 
iments is so good, that, although many of the officers who com- 
mand them are Southern men, and until recently had the 
strongest Southern prejudices, those prejudices are almost en- 
tirely broken down, and there is no difficulty whatever in find- 
ing officers. Northern or Southern, to take command of just as 
many of these regiments as can be raised. It is an honorable 
testimony to the good conduct and courage of these long- 
abused men, whom God is now bringing by the Red Sea of 
war out of the land of Egypt and into the land of promise. 
(Cheers.) I have said that it would give me gi-eat pleasure 
to answer any courteous questions that might be proposed to 
me. If I cannot answer them, I will do the next best thing, 
— tell you so. (Hear.) The length to which this meeting 
has been protracted, and the very great conviction that I seem 
to have wrought by my remai-ks, on this Pentecostal occa- 
sion, in yonder Gentile crowd, (loud laughter,) admonish me 
that we had better open some kind of ' ' meeting of inquiry. ' ' 
(Renewed laughter.) It will give me pleasure, as a gentle- 
man, to receive questions from any gentleman, (hear, hear,) 
and to give such reply as is in my power. 

The reverend gentleman remained standing for a few mo- 
ments, as if to give the opportunity of interrogation, but no 
one rising to question him, he sat down amidst great cheers. 
The speech lasted nearly two and a quarter hours. 

The chairman than declared the business of the meeting to 
be at an end, and expressed his thanks for the good order 



39 



which had been maintamed, contrary to certain ill-natured 
predictions. (Cheers and laughter.) 

The chair having been taken by Mr. Bazley, a vote of 
thanks to Mr. Taylor, for having presided, was moved by 3Ir. 
Beecher, seconded by Mr. S. Watts, Jr., and passed by ac- 
clamation. 

Mr. Taylor, in returning thanks, said that it was a subject 
of congratulation, that the enemies to their cause would be now 
prevented frqm saying, as they had falsely said before, that 
the meeting had broken up in confusion. (Loud cheers.) 

The National Anthem was then played on the organ, and 
the audience dispersed, several hundreds previously pressing 
round Mr. Beecher, to shake hands with him. 



JUST PUBLISHED: 

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTUSE : 

A Biograpliy and Aiitol)iograpiiy. 



1 Vol. 12rao. pp. 372, illustrated with an authentic Portrait and Autograph 

of Toussaiut, and a Colored Outline Map of Colonial St. Domingo. 

Price $1.25. 

This volume contains two distinct works, — a Biography and an Autobio- 
graphy. The Biography is that of Dr. Beard, revised and improved, — the 
only impartial, and complete record of the life of the great Xegro in any 
language ; while the autobiography is a translation, made expressly for 
this edition, of the naive and masterly review of his public career, which 
Toussaint addressed to the Emperor Napoleon while he was a prisoner in 
the fatal cell of the Chateau de Joux. This interesting Memoir was pub- 
lished by permission, from the original mauuscriiits in the General Ar- 
chives of France, for the first time about ten years since, by a Haytien exile. 
It has never been translated into English before. A collection of interest- 
ing essays is appended, which embraces a Proclamation by King Christo- 
plie, in which he alludes to Toussaint's services and policy ; an essay by 
Harriet Martiueau, in which she describes a visit to the Chateau de Joux; 
a similar but quite recent account of the same journey by John Bigelow, 
Esq., our Consul at Paris; the poems of Wordsworth and John G. Whit- 
tier on the hero of Hayti; while an extract from Wendell Phillips's great 
oration appropriately closes the volume. 

It is claimed that Toussaint L' Ouvertai'e was not only the ablest Negro 
that has appeared in modern History, but the greatest military genius and 
statesman that the New World has produced up to thejfresent time. Hence 
the appearance of this book, while we are still debating the military capa- 
city of the Negro, is timely and needed. 

AVENDELL PHILLIPS ON TOUSSAINT. 

" You think me a fanatic to-night, for you read history, not with your 
eyes, but with your prejudices. But, fifty years hence, when truth gets a 
hearing, the Muse of History will put Phocion for the Greek and Brutus 
for the Roman, Hampden for England, Fayette for France; choose Wash- 
ington as the bright, consummate flower of our earlier civilization, and 
John Brown tlie ripe fruit of our noonday — then, dipping her pen in the 
sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of the sol • 
dier, the statesmau , the martyr, Toussaint L'Ouvertube." 



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